PMO take on Workfront

I am a champion of Workfront for my company, although I am a SME/admin and not responsible for the day to day Workfront use, it was a great experience begin involved in the implementation and owning one of the workstreams. Workfront lets you become a SME and get to know the system so easily, without constantly changing it (or providing straight forward changes that do not interrupt your day to day work.

Pros

Going from using four different platforms to manage the intake, planning and execution of projects
(ServiceNow, excel, Smartsheet and Microsoft Project) down to 1 single platform has been a life saver for the teams that I am on for my company. We were able to train our submitters on one system, built our own workflows, and then turned around and trained our PM's on the same system. One Pro I love is that we can make changes and enhancements on the drop of a hat (well, with planning and thought ahead of time), versus ServiceNow, where it took us 2-3 minutes to simply change a field name. I also enjoy the time and attention that Workfront has given to my company, they listen well and problem solve along side us, not just for us,

Cons

We are still in the Legacy Resource Planner because we have set up our job roles for each team, so the legacy system lets us set capacity estimates when planning projects (for example, Our Integration team is all under Integration job role, but we allocated 10% of their time in our resource planner towards discretionary projects, which allows us to better plan and prioritize this huge bucket of work). There is no way for us to set capacity %'s for job roles in the new system, without creating new job roles.

Big Fan

I started as a planner and then got promoted to a Marketing Project Manager and became the System Admin. Over time I've noticed people staying on track of their assignments better and knowing overall deadlines. Also all communication for the project lives in one place for everyone on the project, so you don't have to be worried about falling out of the loop via emails like before. User adoption is up thanks to great boot camp training for me as a system admin.

Pros

I really like the organizational elements. Building templates takes a lot of time, but once they're built, it makes it easy for bulk editing and converting requests into projects. When it was first implemented, the company wasn't on board outside of the Marketing department. After attending Admin Boot Camp, I created a staff training program and now user adoption is much higher.

I especially love the legacy of projects. You can refer to previous years for recurring events/projects.

Your support team is very nice and professional. Lately your team has offered calls after submitting tickets which I greatly appreciate it. It makes it much clearer on both ends.

Also love that all documents, updates, etc. live in one place and not in dozens of offline emails!

Cons

The new Home isn't fantastic. There are still a lot of limitations, so the number of clicks are still the same as the legacy version. For example, if they want to refer to a document in the task, they have to click into the task. Also, there's difficulty in seeing all updates made in the task so if you need to reply to a thread, you can't do it. At least our users can't.

Sys Admin User

We use the tool to manage all website development projects (tasks, assignments, schedule, LOE, performance reporting, team management, etc.) time logging, Agile burndown, Kanban, employee tracking, and billing; pretty much every aspect of our business.

Pros

-The ability to customize the software to fit within your business operations. It's not a one size fits all where you have to modify company operations to fit within like other PM software.
-The reporting functionality and the ability to build custom reports
-Once you learn how to use it and get to know the intricacies, textmode is AMAZING! It allows you to build very custom reports, templates, fields, calculations, etc. to meet the needs of your business.
-The support team is great! Having a dedicated support contact with standing weekly 30-minute meetings has been very helpful. Additionally, the "consulting hours" come in very handy when there are items that myself or other system experts within my company can't figure out because they are able to use their knowledge and expertise to get us what we need.

Cons

-We submit enhancement ideas or tickets to the product team and feel like they always just get lost in the shuffle. There are a lot of things that we could use but I guess other companies or Workfront don't see the value so our ideas are very slow to be added to their Product Roadmap or come to market.
-It's not the cheapest on the market, that's for sure.
-There is somewhat of a learning curve for new employees at my company trying to learn the software just because it is SO powerful.
-There could be better integrations, specifically with Git.

Workfront makes managing projects easy with strong training, support and reporting features.

It helps us save time when it comes to resource allocation and time management. The reporting features helps upper-management better understand what we are doing and how much time it takes to do it. I love how they are constantly pushing updates that help improve the tool based on user feedback.

Pros

I have been a Workfront user for a few years now and am a big proponent of this project management tool for several reasons.
1) I find it very intuitive for users to use
2) It is easily customized based on the needs of your users
3) The reporting feature is worth the price of admission itself
4) Their support team is quick to respond and the self-help area is robust so you can find an answer to any question you may come across
5) Workfront offers a comprehensive training tool that covers several types and levels of training for users at all levels including frequent live trainings
6) The Community area is a great place to share ideas and ask for help from other users
7) They are constantly making updates and improvements to the tool
8) The Workfront Proof viewer is a great feature for those who want to markup and share creative within a project.

We looked at several solutions and I'd say that Workfront was by far the best option for our internal creative agency.

Cons

Setting up can be time consuming if you don't already have a process in place. Do your homework and dedicate the time to do it right before launch or else user adoption can be difficult. Plan on user adoption to be your biggest hurdle as people are uncomfortable with change. Make the Workfront trainings mandatory before use.

Complete and powerful PM information system with some areas to improve

Working in an in-house marketing department, we have been using Workfront for three years to manage our projects and operations. We need overall visibility on all the activities of our department, plus a powerful collaboration platform. Our main aim using Workfront is to manage the capacity vs workload of our department and to be able to forecast the demand. Workfront is fulfilling our basic needs, but we feel that there is a lack of ability to create clear dashboards or to have a better visibility of critical task between multiple projects at the same time (which happens when several campaigns overlap). There are other points to improve (see Cons below), but it seems that folks at Workfront are committed to improve those areas and correct the product weaknesses.

Pros

Logging hours is not painful (as it actually sounds), there are several choices to input them and it’s quite easy to get used to the habit.
The collaboration features are very good: comments, sharing if documents, approvals...
Work requests via assignments are clear and provide accountability.
Integrated document proofing and versioning is a must for any creative department and this one works really well.
Workfront support is quick and responses are elaborated, always providing a workaround if there isn't a functionality to match your need.

Cons

Reporting is a bit limited; while basic reporting is completely fulfilled and you can present the information in clear graphs, when you try to create complex relations (historic vs forecast, capacity vs demand) things get more complicated, there are limitations and you need workarounds to obtain the desired (or closest to the desired) information.
Sharing of information is cumbersome; although you can send automatic reports by email, it's difficult to distribute more elaborated pieces of information.
Resource management is limited; there are tools in the system, but they are not intuitive and are a legacy of previous versions of the system.
Learning curve is steep, it doesn't take much time to get familiarised with the common request-collaborate actions (which most of the users will do), but it needs much time and training to carry out actual project management processes within the system.

Workfront Great for 'Doers' to monitor their KPI's

Great product!

Pros

This software works great to track your KPI's and to update and monitor your progress on any assignments that are assigned to your and projects you are working on. For simple to-dos and assignments and tasks, etc. it's really effective with a pick list of choices to choose from to update the status, upload files, log hours work, comment, etc. and inform business stakeholders requesting on the progress of a given workfront request. For more thorough projects, it is very detailed and shows the workflow broken down if you know how to set expectations with Project Management tools following the process of PMI (Project Management Institute) or that of the project management profession itself and along the lines of the PMP; such as float and slack time, dependencies on tasks for deliverable's, critical paths, etc.

Honestly it's a great tool and I highly recommend it. I use it daily and as long as you take the time to learn and use the tool lit'll help your organization and employees to better manage their workloads in Workfront. For me, it helps track my KPI's and deliverables for various stakeholders and business leaders.

Cons

It can be a bit complex at first, especially if you don't have any training. Like anything newly learned, it takes time and if you're not experienced with project management software you may find yourself in a bit of frustration using it.

I was hesitant, but I'm a believer

I'll admit... they sort of had to drag me kicking and screaming into using Workfront. I feared that it was going to be one of those things where it took more time to document/track what you're doing than it took to actually do it. Fortunately that turned out not to be the case. We've found a good balance between tracking things and not having to "feed the beast" all the time.

Pros

Workfront is quite versatile for tracking projects and larger workflows. We use it for individual projects, ongoing work efforts, and even tracking ideas for future development. Other areas of our business use it as a request queue as well, which helps us to put in requests with our communication team and even log suggestions for office improvements. A decent (but not mindblowing) reporting suite with text and simple graphic output helps share status updates.

Cons

The reporting suite could allow for a bit more freedom; it feels slightly stilted when trying to use it. I also was not a fan of the option to have the software tell you that you're on track or behind. I prefer to assign the status myself as I'm involved with the project more intimately and have more of the big picture. Fortunately that's easily changeable in the project settings. The real cons are honestly self-induced. The temptation is there to track all the minutiae of every little bit of the project. And you certainly can... but it ends up being counterproductive as you spend more time updating than doing. Keep your items lofty and you'll avoid that trap.

Workfront Review

We have dozens of projects every day, with different employees in different capacities working on them -- project managers, team leaders, supervisors, editors, writers, graphic designers, proofreaders, strategists. Everyone's input and progress can now be corralled in one place. We have a clear window view in to how the project is going and who might need help with what. Everything is documented in one thread so there is no hiding from a mistake or missed deadline. We can take people outside of the task, like our Legal Department, to get their insight on certain matters.

Pros

What I like most about Workfront is the visibility it gives to employees and project managers as they navigate a workload from week to week. If 10 people are working on the same task, they can communicate through Workfront channels with respect to questions, concerns and updates. And everything is documented. So, if a conflict arises, we can just go back through the Workfront thread and see what happens. Documentation is so important, especially when you have dozens of projects going at one time.

Cons

It was tough to learn. After a year, I still did not feel like I had it figured it out. The workload queue setup felt wonky to me and I would often grab work from the wrong places because things weren't clearly marked. Also, and maybe this is on our company's IT side of things, it seemed to crash with a certain frequency, or would not normally be available.

Robust and Flexible But Missing a Few Critical Things

Pros

It is very configurable and encompasses the best of both worlds: the traditional project management structure (the project has a life of its own and contains many different kinds of objects), along with lighter object-oriented workflow (comments and approvals associated with specific documents). My product team is very responsive and I've had really great experiences with the remote consultants and help desk. Service is really excellent.

Cons

Given the crazy pace of my daily reality, I wouldn't mind a slower rate of change on the product itself. Change is a good thing, and most of them are good, but it changes so frequently that it feels like my team just gets used to the new features and ways of interacting with the product, and then it changes again.

Among the things I like LEAST:
-it is impossible to expose the actual file name of new document versions. I can't understand why this is so hard. It should be an option to keep your file naming conventions that are relevant to other systems and are relied on by many users, and still take advantage of the versions features.
-you should be able to be notified when there is a new version added. Again, this one baffles me.
- You should be able to mark a communication URGENT somehow, or set a recurring reminder that can automatically nag people for a response.

Using Workfront has made us better.

Pros

The interface and usability of the product is second to none. We've been using the software since 2009, choosing it because of the easy-to-use interface. The product has gone through numerous redesigns of the interface, and things have just gotten easier with each release. Our users really like it, and there is a quick turnaround in terms of getting started and using the product. The functionality of the software also gives us more than just a shared Gantt chart for projects. It really has given us the ability to manage all our work and be more productive.

Cons

The vendor assigns customer success coordinators (CSCs) to each customer which is basically an account rep. The company itself has gone through various leadership changes, and as a result there has been many reorganizations of the staff. As a result, we have had many different CSCs and really have not had the opportunity to get to know our representative and our representative getting to know us well. Everyone has been great, but the inconsistency on account reps gets frustrating.

Wonderful way to track your work, communicate and report on almost anything you can dream of.

It allowed our IT department to go from 5 products to track our work (ITSM, Assana, TFS, MS Project, and Spiratest) to one product where we use it for our Helpdesk, Projects, Agile Teams, Test Cases, and results, and many many dashboards and reports to gauge how we're doing. Now we're able to track our work and if the work belongs to another team we can pass it along without having to recreate it in another tool. The communication function is also been a success for us.

Pros

The work tracking, communication and reporting capabilities. Reporting is a misnomer because it's more of a screen view that allows you to dive deeper into the report and the objects in the report. The Communication methods of being able to comment on objects and allow people to respond via email and still append the reply as a log in the object has been a big win for us. Even naysayers now love the product in our organization. The reporting is so powerful I instruct users to develop their dream scenario and I can usually deliver what they want.

Cons

From time to time it can get glitchy. They've made great improvements on this over the years and I've had the same issue with other products too (i.e. MS Project used to crash on me once a day). But for the complexity of the product and all the functionality it delivers, it's a very small percentage of time that this occurs.